


Jewel

by Serai



Series: High Contrast [39]
Category: The Faculty (1998)
Genre: Betrayal, Family, Father-Son Relationship, Loneliness, M/M, Mother-Son Relationship, Rejection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-03
Updated: 2016-07-03
Packaged: 2018-07-19 19:09:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 582
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7373926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Serai/pseuds/Serai





	Jewel

.  
There must have been a time when his father loved him.

It has to be true, he knows it. Isn't that what families do, love each other? Hold each other close, look out for each other? There must have been a time before the frowning brows and the heavy sighs. A time when his father only smiled or laughed to see him, when his eyes held pride instead of contempt, and that look of guarded suspicion.

He remembers a day long ago, when he was a very little kid. His father's hands felt enormous as they lifted him up and tossed him gently into the air, caught after two seconds' breathless flight, caught and tossed and caught again, giggling as his parents' laughter filled his ears. Then falling down in those wide, warm hands, to be surrounded by strong arms, and his mother's fingers stroking his hair as his father's voice rumbled against his ear. A bright day, a sunlit day. So long ago.

He can't remember the last time his father smiled at him. He knows it happened, but it's no longer there in his memory. It's no longer anywhere. Now and then a tentative grimace meant to be a smile will appear on his father's face, in response to a good report card or some clever remark. But real happiness isn't something he can bring to those eyes anymore. Now the best he can hope for is a tight, "That's good, son." A lack of hostility instead of the presence of love. Even his mother gave up trying, and now there's only this truce, a silent tolerance of his son's alien nature.

 _I don't know_ who _he is_. Ten years old, and he sat on the top step in his pajamas, listening fearfully to his parents' fighting below. His mother whispering _Keep your voice down,_ and his father raising it in spite. _He's not_ my _son,_ and his son cringed to hear it, tears welling up as the words cut him. _Daddy_ , he thought, without knowing how to think more. Then his mother's voice - _Stop it!_ \- so cold and angry that he couldn't take it anymore, and ran back to his room, to burrow under the covers and cry himself to sleep.

What would it feel like if his father suddenly loved him again? If the anger and the cold were replaced by laughter and warmth? He doesn't know, but he suspects he'd only be frightened, waiting for the backlash, the return of that sullen resentment that makes his days seem so tired and hopeless. 

Things can't always have been like this. There must have been a moment when he could have done something differently. Could he have kept his father's love, or would it always have turned out this way, no matter what he did? He'd give anything to bring that love back, to erase the certainty that he'd ruined everything just by being born, the sense of having failed before he'd even begun.

 

"Sweetheart, your father asked you a question."

Casey looks up from his mashed potatoes, and sees the impatience on his father's face. "Oh, sorry," he says, as the familiar flush of embarrassment burns his cheeks. Frank sighs and repeats the question while Allison passes the meatloaf. Casey answers, going through the nightly rituals - his father's indifference, his mother's perfunctory soothing - and thinks of Zeke sitting alone in the windowseat of his darkened bedroom, his eyes shadowed and silent as he gazes out into the night.

.


End file.
